Despite the fact that we live in the modern world, the problem of the language barrier when visiting other countries will not go away. If you don’t want to learn the language of the country you want to visit, or you simply are not foreign languages, but you love to travel and would like not to experience difficulties in communicating with foreigners, pay attention to novelty WT2 Plus from Timekettle, which at the moment show at the International exhibition of electronics CES-2019 in Las Vegas.
In appearance it is a regular wireless headphones. But in fact, WT2 Plus cost $ 219 is an indispensable device for any traveler – a wireless headset translator. The headset connects to the smartphone based on Android or iOS via Bluetooth and is paired with a mobile application through which the user can select the language and track already spoken phrases. Currently available support 20 languages including Russian, in the near future promise to add at least another 15. In addition, the application recognizes different accents. For example, there is support for up to 5 accents of English, including Australian English.
While a pair of headphones (each battery is 110 mAh) are placed in a pocket case, its battery (capacity 320 mAh) charging them. Full charge (takes 90 minutes) lasts up to 5 hours of talk time. Standby time – up to 30 hours. The battery case is enough for two charging each earcup. Once the case is revealed in two parts, is automatically activated, both the headset with a smartphone user (you need only one device), and you can start to talk with a foreigner.
Both users can speak and listen to each other, each of them wearing one earpiece from the kit. Until one of them says, the headset transmits speech to the smartphone, where the app translates and then passes it to the earpiece of your interlocutor. The same process goes in the opposite direction. The time between spoken words, the translation and output to the ear of a foreigner is up to 3-5 seconds. An example of the headset of the interpreter, you can watch the video below WT2 Plus.
Gadget supports three modes of operation. In addition to the “Auto” mode, when the device does everything itself, “Touch”, which requires the user before pronouncing sentence to touch the earpiece. More practical this way might be when communicating in a fairly noisy environment – the device will not catch and translate the foreign voices. For those who hesitate to pass the earphone to other people there is a third mode “Speaker”. In this case, the owner of headset uses the headset, while the other person can read the translation of the spoken phrases app on your smartphone, listen to it and respond via speaker phone.
The company Timekettle promises up to 95 percent accuracy in the translation. For translation use the cloud servers of Google and Microsoft. Thus, the application requires constant access to the Internet, but the company promises this year to release the offline version of the translator. Experienced headset translator at CES, journalists say that the gadget copes at least with translation from/to English and Chinese.
At the same time, the manufacturer is a little disingenuous calling the device interpreters in real time. In fact, the gadget is able to translate at a time only a short phrase up to 15 seconds. In other words, it will not be used, for example, when watching movies in a foreign language. This limitation makes it look like the headset translator Pixel Bud. However, the latter works only with smartphones Pixel from Google.
The novelty is not ideal, but in any case it would be much easier and nicer than trying to figure out the foreigner how to find the nearest toilet, landmark, or restaurant, while desperately gesticulating. For those who are interested, you can order here. What do you think? Please share your opinion in our Telegram chat.